Letters to the Editor
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A way out that might work
I wrote the following, still pertinent, in my blog last March: "But we cannot wait for the good will of the rich to save our future. We must find our own ways to change how the planet, in lieu of an actual benevolent leadership class. The unendowed masses of people of the planet must make the needed changes on our own.
How to do it? A perfect example is Iraq. We can be sure that the colonial powers, past and present, are not going to do anything that is good for the masses of people in that "country." So a solution has to be found without them. The Muslim nations of the world are plenty angry and humiliated about what has been done by the Bush crime family since September 11, 2001. They aren’t so happy about the way they are treated by the European nations either.
A conference of Muslim nations would be a good place to find a solution. If Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Indonesia, Malaysia, Algeria, Bahrain, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kuwait, the African Muslim states, and the other Muslim countries could get together in a "Bretton Woods"-type conclave, a humane settlement of the Iraq debacle can be found. This conference would also include representatives from India, which contains the second largest Muslim population on the planet.
I can think of a few points that such a meeting would likely decide:
1. The United States of America and Great Britain will have no presence or control whatsoever of the land and people of "Iraq," if the country is actually to continue.
2. Whether the "country" of Iraq, created by the British, will continue in its present form is to be decided by a combination of the inhabitants of "Iraq" and the other countries involved.
3. The oil of "Iraq" will be controlled by the people who actually live there in a democratic manner, most particularly in an economically democratic manner.
4. Economic aid will be provided by the invaders, paying restitution for the invasion, destruction, lawlessness and occupation.
5. The military defense and establishment of law and order will be provided by the Muslim nations of the world until such time as the people of "Iraq" can adequately provide these protections for themselves.
6. The planners, perpetrators, and profiteers from the invasion and occupation of "Iraq" will be tried at an appropriate international tribunal, and the guilty punished according to international standards.
7. The participating nations and peoples in this conference will continue to work together to find solutions to other problems, such as the depletion of the oil supply, Global Warming, overpopulation, environmental destruction, and the overall cause, the narcissism of the rich and powerful."
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Mark, you've got a blind spot
You have only mentioned the word oil twice in this piece. Both times it was a Bush quote. Honestly, how the hell can you talk about Iraq without devoting at least a couple of paragraphs on Iraq oil and how it drives the majority of American policy there.
So you hash and rehash sections of Woodward's book. Your hindsight is terrific. In all your research for this piece, you never focused your attention on oil? That seems unbelievable.
All you've done for the most part here is gossip and repeat other people's gossip about the soap-opera shit that went on in Iraq after the invasion. General Garner and Paul Bremer having a little cat fight and that sort of mildly interesting, but ultimately irrelevant stuff about inter-agency conflicts.
What the hell, Mark! What about the 800 pound gorilla, the fucking oil?
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The fucking oil
...has little or nothing to do with the war.
If all the US wanted was the Iraqi oil, all they had to do was sign a treaty with Saddam. He keeps the country stable (through repression), we get the oil. That's how that works--get it?
All you are doing when you claim the US is fighting for oil is giving an incompetent administration cover for their stupidity. You are claiming that they actually know what they are doing, when, in fact, they are not even competent enough to steal for us.
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The fucking oil...
...has everything to do with it. Remember Goldfinger? Think Oilfinger! The invasion had a short-term goal and a long-term goal.
The short-term goal was to sow such chaos and vandalism as to bring
Iraqi oil production down, thereby forcing the price of Texan oil,
Oklahoman oil, Saudi Arabian oil up. The long-term goal was to
install a pet government in Iraq which would de-nationalize the Iraqi
oilfields and turn over production and profits to the 4 Major American oil companies via the mechanism of sweetheart Production
Sharing Agreements. The point will be to keep oil prices up by
keeping Iraqi oil production restricted and keeping OPEC strong.
And privileging American oil companies to take a sweetheart share
of the revenues. It's all about the oil. Think like a chess player.
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So speaks the senile American left
...anything that's done will either raise prices or lower them, thus any event can be used to 'explain' anything. But it's not true. The simpliest way to 'get oil' is to sign with a dictator, as in Saudi Arabia, where the oil is also 'nationalized.'
Oil companies want to make money, not war (or love). When the first Bush stopped the first Gulf War and refused to take out Saddam, that may well have been the influence of the oil compainies. They would rather all the fighting stopped so that they could ship and sell oil. But that was influence in a pacifist direction, so the senile left ignored it.
We invaded for exactly the dumbshit reasons put forth by Henry Kissinger and others: that we needed to 'humilate' them before they humilated us. That we needed to put up a 'demonstration model' to make brown Islamic people go, "ooo--mustn't mess with Texas." That we needed to 'show strength' and prove that America is not 'weak.' They also wanted to prove their various theories such as that torture works and that a president with no restraints is more effective than a president with restraints and that a war can be fought without raising taxes.
The people in the Bush administration are not grownups. They are not rationalists. They do not even have the simple competence of theives and thugs. They are idealists and dipshits and blowhards and politicians and fortunate sons and they have more to do with tv pundit thinking than with realistic thinking.